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Impossible Foods Teams With Black Leaders To Promote Voter Registration

Plant-based food marketer Impossible Foods is aligning with Black artists, entrepreneurs and community organizations to encourage voter registration with a virtual initiative called VoteNik.

It’s a play on the term Freaknik—the annual spring break festival  that celebrates Black culture and music, started in Atlanta in 1983 by students from historically Black colleges and universities

Vote-Nik’s Zoom To The Polls is a series of six online events that begins today with a Zoom session featuring Dr. Lakeysha Hamilton, the founder of Village Market ATL in Atlanta. Village Market trains Black owners of businesses and helps to connect them with investors, resources and consumers.

Joining Impossible Foods on Vote-Nik are Pinky Cole, the founder of the Slutty Vegan restaurant and food truck service, along with her Pinky Cole Foundation, as well as hip-hop music notable Jermaine Dupri.

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“Impossible Foods is on a mission to make the food system more sustainable by making meat directly from plants. And yet the company is clear that the food system cannot be sustainable without being equitable. The greatest equalizer we have is our democratic process,” Jessica Appelgren, Impossible Foods vice president of communications, tells Marketing Daily.

Pre-COVID-19, the Slutty Vegan food truck traveled to dozens of cities to promote voter registration. As customers waited on line for their food, they could fill out voter registration forms.

“I’m passionate about voting rights, social justice and delicious food—and this is an incredible opportunity to combine all three things,” Cole said in a statement.

A dedicated VoteNik page on the Impossible Foods website declares 2020 to be “the most important election of this generation’s lifetime.”

Other Zoom participants will include Eunique Jones Gibson, the founder of Because Of Them We Can, which celebrates Black history figures; Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Randall Woodfin; and Chaka Zulu, Co-CEO of Disturbing Tha Peace Records and Ebony Son Entertainment.

They will be joined in their Zoom sessions by unannounced celebrities on Sept. 29, Oct. 6 and Oct. 13.

In addition to Zoom To The Polls, Impossible Foods says it will be sponsoring “additional physical events related to voter registration.”

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